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Proper English, as in "Crikey, It's the Loo!"

What in the Sam Hill are lippings, we beseeched? Answer: trim. Conversely, our colleagues from across the pond were anxious to know who, precisely, Mr. Sam Hill would be.
http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature335.htm - July 2, 2010

Sacred Simplicity: Park East Synagogue by Centerbrook Architects and Planners

Pepper Pike, Ohio: Age-old materials and a straightforward design fulfill a growing congregation's vision of a sacred place
http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature220.htm - ArchNewsNow

Who What When - 10/31/02: dates & deadlines, noteworthy, on the boards, names and faces

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature85.htm - October 31, 2002

Today’s News - Friday, July 2, 2010

•   A fitting start to Independence Day weekend: a Centerbrook architect takes a stab at creating a British-to-American glossary for Yale's Kroon Hall U.K./U.S. team (lippings, skirtings, totems, and a bit of kit included).
•   Part of Cleveland's plan for a comeback is investing in 58 pilot projects "that move vacant land strategies beyond temporary fences and lawns."
•   Saffron cheers Drexel University finally "getting the hang of the urban thing" with two new buildings.
•   Risen rallies behind Stout's new museum in Roanoke: "it's hard to imagine anything else in its place...a delicate balance of convention and unorthodoxy."
•   Calys says Cavagnero's "skillful renovation" of the Oakland Museum of California "makes sure the museum keeps its Roche and Dinkeloo edge."
•   Heathcote on the "astonishing discrepancy" between sales prices for great works of art and great works of architecture, and says it's high time to market Modernism.
•   Zohn + Zaha re: her MAXXI Museum: "It's a sort of architecture-on-Pilates" (great Q&A).
•   An amusing lunch with Nouvel reveals "why so many of his buildings are red or phallic or both...his penchant has to do with strawberries, greed and childhood gratification."
•   An in-depth Q&A with Mathur and da Cunha re: why they concentrate less on client-driven commissions than on issue-centered public investigations.
•   One of the "smaller pieces of brilliance" at the London Festival of Architecture is "a clever little contraption": a zero-carbon elevator at the Duke of York steps.
•   Pridmore waxes poetic about Ponte Vecchio, a "marvel of medieval construction" that reveals Florence's layered history of "genius, commerce and tyranny."
•   A tribute to Ralph Adams Cram, the unsung architect behind Cape Cod's "grand old ladies known as the Bourne and Sagamore bridges."
•   Weekend diversions:
•   With luck, the "clever blend of optimism and pragmatism" in "Our Cities, Ourselves" at NYC's Center for Architecture "will convince local planners and policy makers to - at the very least - "find better role models for urban growth than Miami and Detroit."
•   Kamin can't say enough about "Louis Sullivan's Idea": it's "one of the finest architecture shows to appear in Chicago in a long time" (great pix, too).
•   Perrin finds "three is a crowd" in the CCA's "Other Space Odysseys," where "three visionary architects get lost in space."
•   Gruber finds "despair" in the pages of "Urban Design": "one cannot read these essays without reflecting on how disastrous the past 50 years have been for cities."
•   At 765 pages, "Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970" is "lavishly illustrated" with "lively tales of friendships gone south...and petty crummy selfishness" (FLW "may have been the Daddy of modernism but he was not a nice guy").
•   An eyeful of photographs by Høltermand: "I focus on 'ordinary' architectural buildings and turn them into desolate containers."

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_07_02.htm - Friday, July 2, 2010

Today’s News - Tuesday, July 6, 2010

•   ArcSpace brings us an eyeful of Henning Larsen's winning design for the Batumi Aquarium in the Republic of Georgia.
•   Anderton on the untimely passing of architect and friend, Stephen Kanner (only 54), co-founder of L.A.'s A+D Museum and "a man who got to make a large mark in a short time."
•   A new report (with some impressive numbers) indicates that the green building market will balloon by 2015 (green office renovations are not just a passing fad).
•   New uses for shuttered auto dealerships are as numerous as the properties (parking lots a big plus).
•   £7.5 billion cut from U.K.'s Building Schools for the Future program means big hurt for architects, communities - and CABE.
•   An architect explains how we can strengthen "the weakest link in many of the leading urban economies": pre-K-12 education - by designing schools for what Richard Florida calls "a spiky world."
•   Merkel ponders a post-McMansion world: "America used to love the small, well-crafted house. Can we rekindle that love?" (look for inspiration from the mid-20th-century building boom)
•   Michelle Kaufmann is more than a pioneer in the prefab housing movement: "She is making sustainability not only a way to build, but also a state of mind."
•   Caruso St John gets the go-ahead for £45 million makeover for Tate Britain.
•   Crosbie cheers the rebirth of Rhode Island's historic Ocean House: "the only way to save the old building was to tear it down," but in the larger context, it "is very much preserved."
•   Kamin hopes Chicago sees its way to more weekend street closings that "bring new life to dull city blocks...there's a hunger out there for better public spaces."
•   Hawthorne offers a long, thoughtful (and sometimes amusing) take how and why "teasing out the proper credit for a great building can be such a tedious process" (starchitects take note!)
•   Lots of takes on Nouvel's Serpentine Pavilion: Merrick "charts the lure of the lurid" with an interesting history of the "fraught relationship between architecture and the color red."
•   Long calls it "a tea room for our times - not half as self-consciously iconic as you might have expected from the bald-headed superstar."
•   Moore on the pavilion and One New Change: "Few architects have the ability to be as good and as bad, at the same time" (at least "won't be dull").
•   Woodman has a very different view: the "overriding impression is of a stage-set, constructed rather shoddily" (too bad Nouvel isn't "still at the height of his powers" - ouch!).
•   Deadline looms for international call for entries/proposals for Thanatopolis (Memorial Park) at I-Park in Connecticut (no fee!).
•   Two we couldn't resist: one winner of World Bank's "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition is a plan to whitewash the peaks of the Peruvian Andes to slow glacier melt; and the new AIA Guide to New York City shows you where to the Top 10 ugliest buildings in NYC - "pointing them out with great glee."

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_07_06.htm - Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Today’s News - Friday, July 9, 2010

•   Elbasani, the architect known for plans and buildings that revitalized American cities passed away last week at 69; a recent conversation with the gruff optimist and realistic urbanist about his history, inspirations, and aspirations.
•   Kimmelman on the sad state of Rome's crumbling heritage: "The problems are not going to be solved by a few big stars designing buildings but by a larger effort to rethink a city."
•   Astana, Kazakhstan, "one of the most astounding cityscapes between Beijing and Moscow" (a bit self-serving, but eye-popping video).
•   Iceland's (hopeful) symbol of a rebound lies in the "artistic peacocking" of Eliasson/Henning Larsen's Harpa concert and conference center: "it's been the 'little building that could,' minus the 'little' bit."
•   Albert Speer, Jr. thinks plans to turn Nazi rally grounds in Nuremberg into a UNESCO site is "a weird idea."
•   A blow to conservationists as Robert Adam's (super) ambitious plan wins appeal to redevelop London's second-biggest private home after Buckingham Palace (talk about over the top!).
•   King cheers the rebirth of the long-empty hospital on the edge of San Francisco's Presidio: "architectural make-believe never felt so right."
•   Dunham-Jones on the next 50 years' big sustainable design project: retrofitting suburbia.
•   A Kansas county has big plans to take the suburbs seriously with a National Museum of Suburban History (we'll keep an eye out for a call for proposals!).
•   Pearman and Glancey see red - and like what they see - in Nouvel's Serpentine Pavilion (but neither has anything very nice to say about One Change Place, his first permanent London project).
•   Hosey on Vanity Fair's list of greatest buildings of the last 30 years (see ANN, June 30): "what's missing says as much as what's on it."
•   Sejima on designing the Louvre-Lens and curating the Venice Biennale (forget technology, new forms or politics - the focus will be "on architecture as a mere container for events, people and society").
•   Hawthorne on Pitch:Africa, a prototype to combine soccer fields, a water-storage system and community centers - its "design is straightforward - a marriage of pragmatism and idealism."
•   Deadline extended for Architect mag's 2010 Annual Design Review competition.
•   Weekend diversions:
•   A "smack down" in Chicago: Is Eye the next Bean? (one "is big and shiny"; the other "is big and &hellip scary").
•   Heathcote cheers Hadid-designed "Zaha Hadid and Suprematism" in Zurich: "The transformation of this little gallery is spectacular and it is down to the architect."
•   An architect thinks big in small pieces in "LEGO Architecture: Towering Ambition" at the National Building Museum.
•   In Shanghai, "Creative Nature" showcases 10 proposals for public gardens designed by 10 universities from around the world (and they will be built!).
•   We couldn't resist: "slow is the new fast" is the mantra behind plans for giant floating hotels (great pix!) - all they have to do now is create a new building material that will support them.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_07_09.htm - Friday, July 9, 2010

Today’s News - Friday, May 21, 2010

•   Ouroussoff gives thumbs-up to Lincoln Center's "dazzling lawn with a twist," but finds "a surprising insensitivity to the way bodies flow through space" in much of DS+R's renovation.
•   Across the Big Pond, Piano's riotously colorful Central St Giles "achieves a superlative synthesis between architecture and public realm. This is contextual architecture at its very best."
•   Glancey on a number of towering developments that are "beginning to reach for the London cloudscape all over again."
•   Litt on Cleveland's Medical Mart mall plans: "The drawings are dry and abstract, the details skimpy," but the architect and landscape architect "are clearly thinking outside the rectangle."
•   The newest addition to Mexico's Mayan Riviera is a "fetish" hotel with "a mix of urban jungle, red-light district and elegant symmetry" that "inspires strong feelings of awe, interest and disgust - all at once."
•   Brussat cheers Centerbrook's "brilliant" Ocean House hotel: "a rather brave endeavor" in being faithful to the past "insofar as 'copying the past' is considered verboten by most architects, architectural historians and even preservationists."
•   Is the sketch superior to the computer-generated image? Yes, says Alan Dunlop; no says Alice Scott.
•   2010 AIA/HUD Secretary's Awards for affordable housing design (great presentation).
•   An eyeful of NYC's "newest crop of star architects...who might one day be dominating the field."
•   Weekend diversions (and lots of 'em!): architects take center stage in two plays in NYC: "The Bilbao Effect": "Oren Safdie has archibabble and legal-speak down pat - and takes both to task" says yours truly; Teachout says it's "both funny and cruelly smart in its portrayal of the lunatic excesses of the more extreme varieties of starchitecture"; and Bernstein thinks a model resembling "a Frank(Gehry)enstein monster of a building...is the play's least terrifying character."
•   Rather than choosing "to paint portraits of misunderstood saviors, deluded madmen, or monstres sacre," Finfer takes a more welcome approach to Mies in "The Glass House"; Moore marvels at its "smart writing, intelligent direction," and acting that tell the story of "the cigar chomping, champagne guzzling womanizer Mies van der Rohe and the gay, raspy voiced conniving Philip Johnson."
•   "Felipe Dulzaides: Utopía Posible" at Chicago's Graham Foundation revisits Havana's National Art Schools and captures "the structures' alien beauty in a way the few images available online cannot."
•   "OMA Book Machine" at London's AA exhibits the "paradox at the heart of Koolhaas' obsession with the book."
•   In Montreal, "Yesterday's Tomorrows" has 10 artists in "a discursive dialogue" with Modernist architects and designers.
•   Dallas Center for Architecture showcases forgotten modern masterpieces in "Ju-Nel Homes: Dallas Jewels of Mid-Century Modernism."
•   Bas Princen's "Refuge, Five Cities" at Storefront for Art and Architecture proves that in the Middle East "the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, is not so neatly defined."
•   Dieter Rams stars in Frankfurt: "I think that design has a great responsibility for the future. And I'm always optimistic."
•   Stamp's "Britain's Lost Cities: a Chronicle of Architectural Destruction" may be "a very depressing book," but "there are lessons enough here to be learned by those who are not too deaf to listen or too blind to see."
•   "Fascismo Abbandonato" presents "some of the weirdest monsters the Modernist century left behind."
•   Despite "conceptual problematics and editorial glitches," IAAC's "Self-Fab House" offers an "abundance of optimistic proposals."

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_05_21.htm - Friday, May 21, 2010

Today’s News - Thursday, April 22, 2010

•   Happy Earth Day: a 70-year timeline of environmental change.
•   Incredibly in-depth presentations of AIA/COTE 2010 Top Ten Green Projects (much more than just pretty pictures).
•   How green can one of the winners - built in the Saudi desert - be?
•   Hume calls for Earthling Day: "Perhaps it should be about saving ourselves."
•   An economist weighs in: "When will we see an Earth Day where it is finally recognized that the market's invisible hand also has a green thumb?"
•   Makower ponders what's happened to Earth Day: it seems to have become "largely an exercise in symbolism" (and lots of other Earth Day coverage).
•   Chakrabarti takes Jaime Lerner's transformation of Curitiba as a powerful call to action for designers to initiate change in architectural, ecological, political, and urban terms.
•   Seoul sets its sights on becoming the world's most beautiful city in terms of architecture and image, but critics wonder how much of the city's soul will be destined for the wrecking ball.
•   12 cities' gallant efforts to become perfect that "we hope all future cities will embrace."
•   There is no silver bullet to make a downtown successful, but an essential ingredient is public interest and involvement.
•   A fascinating and informative look at Ahmedabad, India's new bus rapid transit system that mixes "transit innovation and traditional culture, and even offers yoga classes to the drivers" (great pix, too).
•   Kennicott begs to differ with preservationists' objections to D.C.'s streetcar plans they say will spoil views: have they "actually gone out in the street and looked for a view anytime recently"?
•   Consensus (!) in the U.S. government: "urban parks can't be separated from broader urban revitalization efforts."
•   Glancey on U.K. election and architecture: "If I were to cast my vote solely on the basis of architectural and planning manifestos, no party would win."
•   Brussat cheers Campbell's call for Bostonians to consider the city's ugliest buildings, but would rather "tear them down. Build beauty instead."
•   Three Bostonians defend Brutalism: "Heroic buildings can be tough to love," but "before we tear it down, we should consider what will be lost."
•   Call for entries: Faith & Form/IFRAA International Awards Religious Architecture.
•   Final thoughts on Earth Day: U.S. forests finally making a comeback? "We're beginning to recognize forests as something far more fundamental and profound, forests as part of the critical infrastructure of our country"; and we couldn't resist a gallery of some of the oldest trees on the planet (we should look so amazing at that age!). Be kind to the planet, please - and not just for today.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_04_22.htm - Thursday, April 22, 2010

Today’s News - Wednesday, February 17, 2010

•   A dressing down of starchitects who "feel able to design abominable" buildings, and "expect the rest of us to be admiring, deferential and grateful" (specifically Libeskind in Dresden and Hadid in Oxford - ouch!).
•   Ditto for Canadian architects designing "technological dinosaurs" and missing opportunities being filled by others: the "profession has marginalized itself with its passive stance."
•   A new report warns London's 2012 Olympics "may not leave its promised legacy of regeneration" (perhaps a study trip to Vancouver would help).
•   Lubell is a bit kinder than Hawthorne was to L.A. Live's new hotel/condo tower: it's overall aesthetic may not be "earth-shattering," but it's still "a major step forward for an urban project that has been sorely lacking in innovative design and urbanism."
•   An infusion of big bucks for NYC's Moynihan Station plans (remember those?), but its future is still "murky" (bless the transit advocates who are trying to stay optimistic - so are we).
•   H&deM tapped for a residential project in Beirut with hopes it will "raise the bar in terms of quality architecture and community development."
•   Baghdad names a winner in a competition to develop an area surrounding shrines in Al Kadhimiya that is "sensitive to area's historical, cultural and social character."
•   An impressive shortlist to reinvent Toronto's St. Lawrence Market North building.
•   Potential work for green designers? Ford to offer dealerships a sustainability program to help them become more energy-efficient.
•   Discovering the mystery of the tent-roofed cube house, the "most characteristic countryside building type of 20th century Hungary."
•   Glancey offers a glowing (but bitter-sweet) tribute to Eduardo Catalano: the ghost of his house in Raleigh "lives on to haunt the architectural imagination."
•   Mark your calendars: this Saturday is 20x20 Pecha Kucha Haiti fundraiser in 200+ cities around the world (check listings - some cities are doing it on different dates).
•   Szenasy challenges design competitions to get beyond awarding prizes based on pretty pictures: it's "a hopelessly outdated approach" that "does a disservice to everyone."
•   Winners all (pretty pictures included): 4th Annual Smart Environment Awards for "for intimate spaces that are not just inspirational but humane"; Travel + Leisure's Design Awards 2010 (Motel 6 among 'em!); and UPTO35 winner is a "bold scheme" for student-housing in the historic center of Athens.
•   Call for entries: UNESCO poster to celebrate "2010, International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures."
•   We couldn't resist: some really amazing 3D pavement art (part deux).

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_02_17.htm - Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Today’s News - Friday, February 19, 2010

•   Should architects try harder to please the public? Yes, says Millais: architects "live in a pseudo-intellectual ghetto"; no, says Gough: "architecture is far too important to be left to the public" (that should endear them to both sides).
•   Anchorage mulls zoning code update, but some worry the pending rules will be a flop: "By imposing these standards you're going to bring everything down to mediocre level."
•   Google and Mountain View (and NASA) in a debate re: the company-town model (is what's good for the goose good for the gander?).
•   Saffron sings praise for Corner's "peerless plan" for a Philly pier: "a nice reminder that good design isn't so much about the size of your budget as the breadth of your imagination."
•   Crosbie croons about an "opportune convergence" resulting in "an exceptional work of architecture" for Yale's Kroon Hall.
•   Merrick measures in on the "King Kongs" of architecture: "So the world has 7 starchitects," SOM (and its "biggest beasts") has a "historically monstrous shadow" that covers them all.
•   A primer on some "heavy hitters," but what do some other starchitects "have to do to earn the nickname of King Kong?"
•   Woodman wonders whether Chipperfield "played it too safe" in Essen (his Neues Museum is "a tough act to follow").
•   The Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Center launches Walks in Contemporary Budapest, an online tour-guide of selected buildings erected in the last 20 years.
•   Weekend diversions:
•   NYC on our mind: Hawthorne finds the "uneven results" of the Guggenheim's "Contemplating the Void" suggest there is one skill that will be most valuable in hard times: "knowing how to make nothing mean something."
•   Smith calls it "a frolicking, mostly feel-good show" where it's the architects "who tend to be most Oedipal." (great slide shows)
•   "Modernism At Risk" at the Center for Architecture offers case studies that "reveal the many ways the design community is working to sustain the legacy of modern architecture - one building at a time."
•   "Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary" at The Drawing Center "captures and showcases his genius as an engineer, mathematician, architect, and composer: "he excelled in all four."
•   At the AIA San Francisco Gallery, "Vertical Gardens" presents imaginary and real projects "that envision solutions for building greener urban environments."
•   In Chicago, "Susan Giles: Buildings and Gestures" includes "an architectural gobstopper."
•   Krieger and Saunders' "Urban Design" offers "a well-rounded assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the differing schools of urban design theory."
•   "Talking Architecture" is a useful book "for those who know little about contemporary Indian architecture. But that is also its main weakness."
•   The "poetic approach" of "Ten Walks/Two Talks" makes it no ordinary tour guide: its "exuberance is something of an art in itself - and an eye-opener for anesthetized New Yorkers."
•   On film: Foster may be "keen to distance himself from Rand's superhero," Howard Roark, but "How Much Does your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?" suggests that "he has at least a little of Gary Cooper in him."
•   With "Visual Acoustics: The Modernisms of Julius Shulman," viewers "cannot help but fall in love with this adorable old man."
•   Seven great movies that star architecture (and lots of great links).

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_02_19.htm - Friday, February 19, 2010